The present invention relates a communication system having a plurality of network devices connected to a network and obtaining e-mail messages directed to the network devices, respectively, from a mail server which is also connected to the network.
Conventionally, electronic devices each of which is configured to obtain e-mail messages directed thereto from a mail server have been known. An example of such electronic devices is an Internet facsimile device, which obtains an e-mail message attaching an image file from a mail server, and prints out the attached image file. Such a facsimile device is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Provisional Publication HEI 11-205573.
In such an Internet facsimile device as disclosed in the above-identified publication, a unique e-mail address should be assigned to each device so that an e-mail message is directed to the one destination facsimile device. If a plurality of internet facsimile devices exist on a network (e.g., LAN), different e-mail addresses should be assigned to the plurality of the Internet facsimile devices, respectively. Therefore, when the number of the internet facsimile devices increases, troublesome work for assigning and setting the e-mail addresses should be performed, which results in increasing of the operation cost of such a network system.